 
To become Sri Lanka’s number one
player in any kind of sport is the dream of every sportsman or
sportswoman. And to achieve that feat at a young age is even more unique
and extraordinary.
 For
Achini Nimeshika Rathnasiri 15, of Lindsay College it has been a dream
come true having reached the pinnacle in the women’s badminton scene
this year. She has just completed a highly successful season and is
looking forward to bring more glory to her country.
Not surprisingly she has been already earmarked as one of the
brightest prospects to win a medal for Sri Lanka at the next Olympic
Games. This may be far from now but badminton experts have predicted
that Achini has the potential to last the full distance and make a
significant impact in the international scene.
Achini had the honour of winning a silver medal in the Girls doubles
event at the 2005 Singapore open youth championships and has represented
the country in World Youth Championships, Commonwealth Youth Games and
Asian under 16 tournaments.
Her coach Chinthaka Fernando was really impressed with the
outstanding performances of Achini who had the credit of overcoming the
more experienced and Sri Lanka’s Olympic representative Thilini
Jayasinghe at the previous senior national semifinals.
I saw her first playing, at school level may be eight years back, I
knew definitely that she would come up to a standard and of course year
by year she proved herself by winning all junior titles and coming up to
a national level. But she did not get tough opponents when she was
playing in a junior nationals.
But in Achini’s defeated the under 19 players quite easily. I believe
if she is trained in a systematic way with a long term process she
should be able to win the nationals and do something special at Asian
level and probably even win a medal at the next Olympic Games.
She should climbed the ladder of success and put in a lot of hard
work and should know what type of goal she should achieve.
Fernando who is also in charge of the Sri Lanka junior squad believes
that Achini should have produced even better results by now considering
her talent and the potential.
 She
should be able to do better than this as she has more experience after
playing a couple of tough tournaments with the top level players in
2008.
Fernando who is also the coach at Lindsay College feels that Achini
needs to concentrate more on her technique and improve her game plan as
she will be up against different kind of players in the coming years.
She has to do a lot of game planning. When it comes to a very tough
match specially a three setter you should know what you are doing at the
last minute specially in adding the finishing touches. You may play a
good game but a couple of silly mistakes could cost a lot at the end.
You should be mentally strong while playing the game and have a lot of
self confidence.
Fernando who has been associated with the game for more than a decade
said that Achini has a great advantage being a left handed player. If
you compare with the former players she is very much ahead of them
because she is a left hander.
We did not have enough left handers in the women’s category for a
long period. Former national champion Sriyani Deepika was a good left
hander during her days. There are a lot of advantages of being a left
hand player to beat your opponent. Achini is still 15 and within the
next two years of time she should be able to do wonders, concluded
Fernando.
- Chris
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